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ElATXON, 

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UNDER Ti!E AUSPICES OF 




Charles 


w. 


Sawyer Post, G. A. 


R., 




REV. 


LEANDER S. COAN, 

MAY 30, 1S76. 




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MBBEY 


DOVER, N. H. : 

& Co., BOOK AND JOB PRINTERS. 

1876. 





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IM El IMI O IR, I A. L ZDjk.1T 



DELIVERED IN THE 



Oitrjr HCall, ZDo^T-er, 1ST. K.., 



UNDER THE AUSPICES OF 



Charles W. Sawyer Post, G. A. R., 



REV. LEANDER S. COAN, 

MAY 30, 1876. 



-- < ■»-— s» 



DOVER, N. h. : 
LlBBEY & Co., BOOK AND JOB PRINTERS- 

1876. 




U./JE 

0/ WASH' 



'G&5 



Entered according- to Act of Congress in the year 1876, 

BY LEANDER S. COAN, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



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L^YCURGUS,the Spartan lawgiver, who allowed 
*? no inscriptions upon the monuments of the 
dead, made an exception in favor of those who died 
in battle. That they died for Sparta, was ground 
for perpetuating their deeds and virtues. This, what- 
ever its object, resulted in rearing a race, ready to 
die for national honor. By doing justice to the dead, 
the living were inspired to nobler deeds. 

Who shall chide us, if we in like spirit set apart 
one day in every year to twine our wreaths for our 
dead who died in battle ; died not for aggrandizement 
by aggressive warfare, but for the preservation of 
national life and liberty? Who shall chide us if we 
pause one hour in a year to read the inscriptions on 
their monuments, or to drop a tear upon "nameless" 
graves? Not because we love them more than the 
rest of our dead, but because we also love the land 
for which they died. 

We are gathered here to supplement the 
formal ceremonies of Memorial Day ; to seek inspir- 
ation from the example of those whom we have hon- 



4 Memorial oration. 

ored to-day, to treasure the lessons oi the past, 
and to take a look forward ; hoping thereby to gain 
clearer conceptions of the duties that devolve upon 
us in this initial year of the second century. 

The services we perform to-day have unusual 
significance. We are not only permitted to content 
plate the sacrifices of the loyal dead, but are given to 
behold the consummation of that for which they died. 
It requires no : great discernment to see that, if their 
praves had not been filled, there would have been to 
our nation no Centennial Year ,' or, that our flag would 
have disgraced us all by waving over more than four 
million slaves. 

I for one come to the duties of this hour with no 
partisan bitterness, with no desire to perpetuate strife. 
I will ask no humiliating deed of the brave men 
whom we fought. If it were in my power to reach 
out and drop a flower upon every grave of a north-- 
ern man who fell, I would likewise drop one upon 
every other green mound that covers one who 
wore the gray. We do not ask them to level the 
graves of their heroes. As they deck them with the 
flowers of Spring, they shall have no rebuke from 
me. And if I were to meet a man who fought 
against us, if he to-day honors the flag, and loves 
our native land, I would give him my hand with a 
soldier's greeting,. I have already forgiven, but until 
memory and the green mounds we have to-day visi- 
ted are obliterated, I cannot forget. It were unwise 
for either the North or South to blot out the lessons 
of the past fifteen years. 

Can we forget the day w r hen Sumter's guns rang 
through the land their booming defence of the old 
Flag? Can we forget that day when the blood- rushed 



MEMORIAL ORATION. 5 

back upon our hearts, when our faces grew pale, 
but not from fear? There was no cowardly fear, but 
there was a suffocating fear for the honor of that star- 
ry Ensign of Liberty for which so many have fallen. 
Then, while hands were clenched, and lips com- 
pressed, while tears fell hot and fast over many faces, 
then was first kindled the patriot flame that went not 
out until death quenched it upon our country's al- 
tar of sacrifice. It would be a national disgrace and 
disaster if we were to forget the lofty enthusiasm of 
those days. Standing by the graves of our dead 
comrades, I firmly believe, that neither Swiss, 
Roman nor Spartan youth ever loved native land < 
with loftier or purer devotion, or died for national 
honor with holier zeal than those same youth whose 
graves we have wet with our tears; who rose 
that day with a strange new light in their eyes and 
an unquenchable fire in their hearts. 

Revenge and bitterness may go, shall go, nay, 
have already gone, into oblivion. But if with these, 
the lessons of the past, to the North and South alike 
are to be lost ; if the graves of our dead on both sides 
must be leveled ; if the zeal ot fathers, brothers, 
and friends is to be forgotten ; if we must forget the 
honor of preserving national life ; if oblivion is to 
take the thought that we have a nation worth d}nng 
for — then that oblivion had better never come. If the 
peace and oblivion, which are heldup'by some as the 
ideal of the American patriot, require me to hush my 
breath and speak it softly when I speak of Loyalty 
and the Flag ; if they require me to declare that 
there is not, nor has been, nor can be such a thing as 
Treason — if that be, then the mistake of the war was 
not in rebellion, but the mistake was in following the 



6 MEMORIAL ORATION. 

old Flag with the delusive dream that it was the sym- 
bol of a Nation. 

By the side of the graves of those who died fac- 
ing us, under the flag that went down ; men whose 
courage we honor ; wiiose valor we know ; whose 
manliness we admire ; of whose soldierly qualities we 
are proud, in that they are America's sons ; whose 
graves we to-day would adorn with brotherly hands, 
bringing emblems of peace; — standing by their 
graves we can, we must, affirm it: An armed rebell- 
ion was Treason, and the instigation thereof a crime. 

Unwittingly committed by the greater part of 
that great host of brave men, yet still a crime, though 
as conscientiously thought to be the duty of patriot- 
ism as any of us considered our aims to be. If the 
lessons we have learned, are to go into oblivion, then 
one-fourth of a million brave men died in vain. By 
the side of the graves, the countless graves, by 
the Appomattox, and at Arlington Heights, and 
those that we to-day have honored, we will re- 
affim it : Our National Law defines such an offence 
as Treason, and recognizes it as a crime. An 
offence already atoned for ; for which we ask hu- 
miliation of no man ; for which we demand no 
penance ; ask no sycophantic abnegation of val- 
orous southern manhood. But while we thus honor 
them, take them by the hand and delight to see them 
stand erect by our sides as brothers, we can not, we 
will not, forget the pale, mutely pleading faces of our 
loyal dead. Their tottering and torn forms plead to 
us ; their motionless lips seem to whisper, Do not dis- 
honor our memory ; do not surrender that for which 
we died. 

With these silent hosts for witnesses, witnesses 



MEMORIAL ORATION. 7 

clad both in blue and gray, we make the bequest of 
the First to the Second Century of National life : 
We give and bequeathe to the next century one Flag, 
that has never been dishonored, that has never trailed 
in the dust, upon these conditions : That it shall float 
through that cycle from the Lakes to the Gulf, from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific, unchallenged and revered ; 
that it shall cover no slave ; that it shall protect men 
of the North and South alike, on land or sea, men 
whose rival valor it shall forever perpetuate. While 
we mean that it shall preserve the fame of their equal 
heroism, the generous manliness of rival spirits, we 
mean that the first century shall also bequeathe to the 
second a knowledge, not to be forgotten, of the differ- 
ence between Loyalty and Treason. This was also 
the last will and testament of our loyal dead, as it 
to-day is ours, and they signed it and sealed it 
in our presence with their blood. 

Have we a Nation worth dying fort 
Sometimes, before the days of sixty-one, men told 
us that there was no longer any valor in our men ; no 
longer any noble ambition in our youth ; that there 
was no longer any true patriot devotion, but only an 
effeminate selfishness, a puerile degeneracy that lived 
with no higher ambition than the greed of gain. And 
at times when we saw the dissipation and dishonor of 
some men ; the apparent irivolity of many of our 
youth, we were fearful that these boding fears of the 
scholastic recluse, these evil prophesies of pulpit and 
press, were well founded. How now about those fears 
which then possessed us? 

I am not one who supposes that our armies per- 
formed unheard of prodigies of valor ; that our Gen- 



8 MEMORIAL ORATION. 

erals accomplished such strategy as no others had 
ever performed ; nor that we shed oceans of blood 
where before, men had only shed rivers or seas. But 
to those who in eighteen sixty said that patriotism 
was dead ; that sober or sublime love of the Flag no 
longer existed ; that courage and endurance were 
things of the past, — I would make answer by point- 
ing to the now historic marches of the war; to the 
tenacity of that slow-moving old army of the Poto- 
mac ; to those beardless boys who, on their way to 
Antietam, marched till the horses gave out by the 
way ; point them to the scores of thousands of graves 
which to-day have been adorned ; suggest them to 
remember those ghastly trenches where hundreds 
were piled, enriching southern soil with the best of 
our own flesh and blood ; yea, if it be not treason so 
to do, will ask them to hang in their homes where 
they can see them wither and fade, the flowers it is 
not our privilege to place upon the nameless graves at 
Andersonville and Macon, over the men who died 
there rather than abjure their fealty to the old Flag. 
And when they have numbered our dead ; taken 
knowledge of our scarred legions which have scat- 
tered to their farms, shops, ships, stores, offices and 
pulpits, back to enjoy the peace they conquered ; — 
who, then, will have the insulting effrontery to affirm 
in this year of our seventy-six, that our brothers had 
no courage, no endurance, no old time patriot zeal? 
Facts that we have seen, history that we have written 
with bayonet and sword, prove that those fears were 
a libel upon American manhood. We did not know 
ourselves until the horrors of war assailed us ; until 
National peril menaced. 

Our fears to-day are different. We fear the in- 



MEMORIAL ORATION. 9 

sidious presence of corruption. We surmise a wide- 
spread infection of personal dishonor. We ask, what 
if the majority are rotten or defected? And it some- 
times seems that the lust of money, and baser lusts, 
can do what lust of power and the sword could not. 
And there is some ground for our fear. 

When men in high places of honor betray their 
sacred trusts, shall -we infer that the -people are thus 
corrupt? 

Let us not be guilty of another libel upon Na- 
tional honor. To my mind these facts prove, not 
that the people are corrupt, but do prove rather that 
they are misrepresented. They prove too little scru- 
tiny on our part, of the united honor and ability of 
the men we have elevated ; that men of honor and 
judgment have too long left important primary duties 
to selfish and designing' men. This assertion of uni- 
versal rottenness of the public heart is an insult to all, 
to every one of our noble men far and near, whose 
souls have not been soiled by treason to truth ; whose 
hearts are not rotten nor even tainted with dishonor ; 
whose hands have not been soiled with bribes ; and 
whose heads have not been turned with the insane 
greed for official position. The same hosts of men who, 
in sixty-one, arose as one man in defence of our na- 
tional life ; in defence of national honor ; are going to 
ri.se again, and if you will heed it, are rising to-day, 
and this time in vindication of personal honor, of per- 
sonal and official purity. It may take four years, it 
may take eight to crush this rebellion against person- 
al integrity, but the years now coming shall witness 
another triumph of law and truth. And as in those 
other days, there were not wanting men to lead us, 
so there shall not be now. 



IO MEMORIAL ORATION. 

We are now suffering no new thing. Turn 
to the pages of history if you think we are. And 
when England or Englishmen, or Americans either, 
sneer at our public frauds, and suggest how much 
better it is in a monarchy, point you in answer to 
Lord Bacon, and ask if they ever heard of bribes be- 
fore. Point to Warren Hastings, and ask if they ever 
heard of selfish governing. Turn to the early pages 
of English fiction and read, the like of which you 
will only find to-day on tables in brothels ; and further 
learn that those same immaculate pages were found 
upon the tables of the best society of that day. Read 
of court intrigues, of open, unblushing, but now 
disreputable lives of lust, and you shall find that these 
sad developments are nothing new in national growth. 
The corruption manifested in too many high places 
does not represent the American people. 

This violent effort to throw off evil indicates 
life. Such vigorous retching is not known in cases of 
extreme weakness and debility. This effort of the 
body politic to purge itself, shows soundnesss and 
health somewhere that is stronger than the disease. 
A case of defalcation, or of political personal disgrace, 
is sent with the speed of lightning, with a partisan 
zest that rejoices in iniquity, to those tireless servants 
of the people (who too often toil thanklessly for the 
public weal,) and is known the next day after its'dis- 
covery, from Maine to California, and read by mil- 
lions at their morning repast. But no lightning mes- 
senger does or can hasten to blazon the sickening 
shame that seizes upon millions of honest hearts. 
• But, gentlemen, you have only to wait until their in- 
dignant voices are heard. This wrong will right it- 
self. The sailor, after a few davs out at sea, finds 



MEMORIAL ORATION. IT 

the water in his casks, ropy and apparently impure 
and unfit for use. But he has only to wait, until, by 
some subtle and unknown chemical process, the slime 
disappears. How, we cannot explain, but the facts 
we know. Some way the pure air of God's blue 
heaven sucks the impurity out. 

As a nation we are but a few days on our long 
voyage. And be you sure some way the body politic 
will work itself clear. Fountains of purity will yet 
gladden the voyagers upon the old ship of state. Had 
it been o"ur destiny to go down, had the old barque 
lacked the toughness and strength to withstand the 
storm, before this the waves of time would have rolled 
over her. The tense and awful strain of the past fif- 
teen years has passed by. Shall we now throw our- 
selves into the sea because the waters of political 
life are ropy and impure? We may well learn a les- 
son from nature ; well heed the teachings of history. 

The Everlasting, God, looking from the infinite 
calms of Heaven, saw manhood enough in the land 
to redeem it. He has made no mistake in allowing 
us to proceed. Had it been our fate to write the record 
of former Republics, then was the time for our de- 
struction. 

Have these western shores waited in vain? Was 
the mould in which destiny intended to cast a great 
nation, planned and placed here for naught? Are 
the vast resources of this continent to lie idle and 
useless? Is the star of the New World's empire to 
grow dim? Is the great Anglo-Saxon race to prove 
an abortive failure, as it must, if our boding fears are 
true prophesies of history? In five hundred years I 
believe that a new race will have arisen from the ma- 
terials already entered into its structure, that shall 




12 MEMORIAL ORATION. 

have written a history under the guardian genius of 
American Liberty, that shall cause the brightest 
dreams of poets and seers to pale in comparison with 
the splendor of its full-orbed brightness. 

God has some meaning in the limitless resources 
of this vast land. And if we are unworthy, or une- 
qual to the task that fate has assigned us, He can 
sweep us all away, and from the prolific womb of 
Time bring forth another people, equal to and worthy 
of the Destiny before them. There will be much ap- 
parent death and deca}% but the foul and impure 
shall, at successive stages, slough away, and the 
young giant of the New World shall arise to grap- 
ple his toil. 

In the shadow of the past, then, treasuring the 
lessons of history, thrilled by the manifest promise 
of the future, with the sun of American honor glint- 
ing across the graves of our dead, with heads uncov- 
ered and faces toward the opening vistas of the future, 
with reverent and prayerful faith in our National 
Destiny, standing on one of the headlands that 
will yet be grandly historic, to-day we will record 
our answer : Our torn and toiling Nation was, 

AND IS, WORTH DYING FOR ! 

And now, before closing, a word about the duties 
of this Centennial year. It would be puerile and 
cowardly in view of our past, and the future we hope 
for, to say that any suggestions of the practical pres- 
ent public duty of citizens, are unworthy of notice 
to-day, or unworthy of any day, or of any hour or 
of any man. The moment a man steps from broad 
general views to suggest practical present duties, it is 
the fashion among some to decry and belittle such 



MEMORIAL ORATION. 1$ 

effort by the cry of "political" and "partisan." That 
Very tendency is one of the fruitful causes of our 
present political disgrace. Statesmen and wise men 
have withheld such advice in hours of public exigen- 
cy, because they feared partisan outcry ; and have 
left too long, the indication of practical public duty, 
in the supposed to be lower field, of politics, to trick- 
sters and scheming time-servers who have too long 
disgraced us. The demand of duty shall not be si- 
lenced to-day, by any obstreperous assumption of su- 
perior sagacity. Our word of practical suggestion 
shall be given, we trust, with a discretion, pertinency 
and dignity befitting the occasion. 

If New Hampshire to-day were to be called up- 
on to decide which, of two historic names, Franklin 
Pierce or Daniel Webster, should receive her suffra- 
ges for the first gift in the land, who supposes, with- 
out casting any discredit upon Pierce, that Webster 
would not be the name written first? And yet, in the 
wisdom of political management, choice was given to 
Pierce, while a Webster could not receive the suffra- 
ges of New Hampshire's sons. He would have hon- 
ored the State more than the State could have hon- 
ored him, and yet, in the blinding clouds of partisan . 
strife, men failed to discern the colossal stature of* 
the man. If to-day you could choose between a Clay 
and a Polk, who doubts where your choice would fall? 
And yet, men once made a different choice. The 
strange and unsound argument against these defeated 
giants was that they had been too long in public life ! 
And has it come to this? Is it a part of the unwrit- 
ten law of the land, that active, honorable service in 
public life,, is to disqualify a man, even with his 
friends and admirers, for the highest place in the 



14 MEMORIAL ORATION. 

land? Shall we, this Centennial year, commit the 
cowardly blunder of putting aside men of known 
ability, tried and true, for lesser men, because they 
are unknown ? It is to be hoped that we have grown 
wiser than this would indicate. 

Let us then this year enter upon the experiment 
of not trying an experiment, in choice of a ruler. 
We will in the duties of the hour label ourselves as 
no man's men ; but I for one will put on record my 
preference for a leader, some man of known purity. 
But purity alone is not enough ; ability is needed. 
And these must combine. And here, would de- 
nounce as unworthy the name of statesmanship, the 
cowardice that dares not speak ; and condemn as a 
fatal error the shuffling political policy which de- 
clares that experience, honor and ability, known de- 
votion to National unity, can unfit a man for the 
leadership of our people. I utter no name ; but in 
the name of reason, and in the light of disastrous ex- 
perience, plead that availability be not counted before 
ability. Pleading, not that statesmanship shall be 
lowered to the present political level, but rather that 
political duties, even in primary matters, shall be 
raised up and be dignified with the wisdom of 
statesmanship- To the ruler who shall be chosen in 
this Centennial year, probably more than any other 
for years to come, will it be given to shape and 
mould the coming century. Let us then as those 
who make rulers, we who shall be governed by them, 
pray and strive that no hand upon which rests 
the stain of a disloyal sword or ballot ; upon no un- 
wise, unclean, no bungling hand, shall rest the re- 
sponsibility of holding the helm of State ; the honor 
of maintaining the dignity of the Nation. Let us 



MEMORIAL ORATION. 1 5 

have a ruler, loyal and true enough to detect both 
Treason and Fraud, with a will and purpose firm 
enough to punish either when detected. 

Whoever he is to be, the republic is to give him a 
place among the world's great names, either to honor 
or shame us for our choice. We are to give into his 
hand the Flag, as an emblem of our nation's honor. 
It is no light task that is ours, or will be his. He 
should be able and wise to guard it well. 

Comrades of the Grand Army, I salute you. To- 
day your numbers are many, and in the heated state 
of the public mind your services are sometimes for- 
gotten. But in the coming years, when the last com- 
rade shall be carried to his long bivouac, then shall 
the whole land salute you. It is ours to have pre- 
served unsullied the glory of this old Flag. Nor en- 
vy nor treason can wrest from us this honor. We 
have seen it in the smoke of battle. At Gettysburg, 
when the gray wave of treason met the loyal blue ; 
when the Capitol was a loyal island, surrounded by 
the surging sea of Rebellion ; when from the contend- 
ing waves of battle the white spray of steel leaped and 
blended together, and the voice of fate said to the. 
Southern surge, Thus far shalt thou come, and here 
shall thy -proud waves be stayed! there we beheld 
it above the smoke and turmoil of conflict. And 
when the dun cloud rolled away, over the green 
earth and under the blue arch, still it floated, torn 
and soiled indeed, but not torn from lack of defend- 
ers, nor soiled by disgrace or cowardice. 

Our love for this banner is not empty boasting. 
These sentiments are not simply an idle sentiment. 
We have written them with sword and bayonet upon 



l6 MEMORIAL ORATION. 

the white page of American history, in red letters 
with our own blood. 

Our Flag ! To-day, again, in the light of the 
past, in hope of the future, we salute it. The breezes 
of coming centuries shall kiss its folds. Generation 
after generation yet unborn shall thank us for the be- 
quest we have handed down to them. Take it tender- 
ly and. reverently, ye coming years ; and clear and 
fair against the blue heaven of future days, let it 
float where our children's children may behold it. 
May it be their holy ambition to keep it free from 
dishonorable stain. And may the day never come 
when it shall float over men who would not, if hon- 
or call, give it a brighter hue with their own hearts' 
best crimson. 



i TBRftRY OF CONGRESS 

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013 785 185 4 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




013 785 185 4 



Hollinger 

pH 8.5 

Mill Run F3-1955 



